The Month in WordPress – February 2023


February has been an exciting month for the WordPress community, with the celebration of the first-ever WordCamp Asia bringing friends and contributors back together in person. But that’s not all; read on for the latest project updates.


Get ready for WordPress 6.2

WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 arrived earlier this week and is ready for download and testing. Work continues on track, with the first release candidate (RC1) due next week and the target for the final release on March 28, 2023—less than four weeks away!

WordPress 6.2 is one of the last major releases planned for Phase 2 of Gutenberg, taking the Site Editor out of beta with a more polished user experience and refreshed interface.

On March 2, members of the release squad hosted the 6.2 live product demo. The recording and transcript will be available soon. In the meantime, these resources will give you a taste of what’s to come:

Help test WordPress 6.2. Your feedback is key to ensuring everything in this release is the best it can be.

Join WordPress’ 20th anniversary celebrations

WordPress is turning 20, and the community is getting ready to celebrate!

As part of the festivities, the project has released a 20th anniversary Wapuu, a set of commemorative logos, and a special playlist with 46 tracks from the jazz artists selected to represent WordPress releases. Official WP20 swag will also be available soon.

In addition, the Museum of Block Art (MOBA) is calling all artists to submit block art themed on “20 years of WordPress.”

Find out how to organize and participate in the WP20 celebrations.

What’s new in Gutenberg

Two new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month:

  • Gutenberg 15.1 was released on February 8, 2023, with access to the Openverse library of openly-licensed media from the Editor. Other highlights include the ability to add custom CSS on a per-block basis and support for shadow presets in Global Styles. This is the last version of Gutenberg that will be included in WordPress 6.2.
  • Gutenberg 15.2 is available for download as of February 22, 2023. Besides continued accessibility improvements, this release adds support for revisions when editing templates and template parts, and refines the navigation experience in the Site Editor.

Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.

Team updates: Global community sponsors for 2023, contributor mentorship program, and more

Following discussions on improving the contributor journey, a new WordPress contributor mentorship program has been proposed to roll out this year.

Feedback & testing requests

Redesign work is well underway on the WordPress Theme Directory. Contributors can follow along on the GitHub repository.

WordPress events updates

Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she explores three interesting trends from WordCamp Asia.


Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @ninianepress, @jpantani, @rmartinezduque.


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